


That Swooping Feeling

by ungoodpirate



Series: Putting The Puzzle Back Together [4]
Category: Glee
Genre: Hiatus fic, M/M, Post- The Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 20:27:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What about you, Kurt? You got any crazy ex-boyfriend stories?”</p><p>“He wasn’t crazy.” </p><p>“You’re young, hot, and successful, sweetie. I bet you’ll find someone else is no time."</p><p>After his break up with Blaine, Kurt tries dating.</p><p>(Actually Klaine-positive, even though this story has neither Blaine nor Klaine.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Swooping Feeling

One day at work, Chase stopped at his desk and asked Kurt, “So, did things ever work out with the flower guy?”

“Oh,” Kurt said first, surprised. No one in his New York life but Rachel knew about Blaine and she knew enough not to bring him up. “No. We broke up.” 

“Sorry,” Chase said. 

Kurt shrugged. He didn’t want to think about it. 

…

Two days later, Chase stopped again. “You should come out drinking with someone of us after work sometime.” Kurt had drank (responsibly) a few times at office events.

“I’m not twenty-one,” Kurt said.

“Weren’t you just in high school? Don’t you have a fake ID? I know I had about three.” 

Kurt chuckled. “I had one once, but it wasn’t very good. I lost it.” By lost it, Kurt meant he took a pair of scissors to it because he was feeling pissed at Sebastian for nearly blinding his boyfriend. His boyfriend… why did he have to think about Blaine?

“Are you okay?” he heard Chase ask through the haze of Kurt’s own misery. “You just made a face like you’re having stomach pains.” Stomach pains… gas pains… like Blaine had thought when Kurt was over-flirting during that performance of “Animal.”

Was everything going to turn into Blaine? Was Kurt going to start seeing silhouettes of shrubs and think it was him? 

…

A week later, Chase tossed something down onto Kurt’s desk. “Fake ID,” he announced. 

Kurt picked it up, holding the edges carefully as he examined it. 

“That’s an actual picture of me,” he said, surprised and a little impressed.

“It’s a quality fake ID,” Chase boasted with a little grin on his face. “It’s been a few years since I needed one, but I still had a contact from my under 21 days. It’s you’re staff picture. Hope you don’t mind.”

“No. Not at all.”

“No excuses, then, come out with some of us after work.” 

 

Out with them he went. It was weird. He had only really talked to them at work and at work functions, so it was a switch, suddenly discussing their personal lives. Chase’s crazy sister, the affair scandal on the 8th floor, Marrisa’s ex having moved into her neighborhood.

“What about you, Kurt?” asked Candy, an office girl with a lot of personality, speaking loudly over the din of the crowd and the thrum of music. “You got any crazy ex-boyfriend stories?”

Kurt choked on his cocktail. 

“And Chase is giving me eyes over the table, so I guess I treaded on something personal. How crazy was he?”

“He wasn’t crazy,” Kurt said, and it came out a lot more sad sounding than he wanted it to. Candy and a woman he didn’t know who was sitting on the other side of him cooed. He really didn’t need to become there… little pet gay or something. 

Candy patted him on the head – she was more than a bit tipsy. “You’re young, hot, and successful, sweetie. I bet you’ll find someone else is no time. We could help!... what is with the eyes, Chase?... oooh.” 

Candy had seemed to come to a certain, resounding revelation. Kurt was just confused. 

…

“Are you okay to get home?” Chase asked him when they exited the bar that night. 

“Yeah, I only had one drink,” Kurt said. 

“That’s a total waste of a fake ID,” Chase said with one of those almost grins of his, nudging Kurt’s shoulder with his.

“But it’s not a waste of my very small intern’s salary,” he retorted, wit in his tone.

“Ah, good point,” Chase said. “Next time I’ll buy you a second drink, then.” 

“Next time?” Kurt said. “So I passed the test. I will be invited out again?”

“Of course,” Chase said, and he was actually smiling at Kurt now. Chase was a pleasant guy. He had a certain amount of office charm, to get things done, smooth out arguments, be on everyone’s side and have everyone on his side. It always was a performance, though. Maybe not through and through, but it was a part of dealing with people successfully.

He didn’t look that way now. 

“I – I should get home. My roommate will be worried. She worries. We don’t live in a great neighborhood.” He was rambling. Kurt Hummel didn’t ramble. He stopped himself and cleared his thought. “So, ah, see you at work tomorrow.”

He smiled, again, that real smile. “Yeah, see you tomorrow. It’s Friday, maybe we can take a long lunch.”

“Sure, I’ll ask Isabelle when I get in if I can.”

 

…

Chase showed up at his desk at 11:55 and asked, “Are you ready to go?”

Kurt nodded. Chase picked up the jacket from the back of Kurt’s chair and helped Kurt into it. “Are we meeting up with anyone else?”

“…No,” Chase said, and there was something a tad slanted to his tone. 

They went to a little bistro not far away from the office and got sat at one of those rather intimate two-seater tables. They ordered their food and got to talking. Kurt talked about work. Chase nodded along. They got their food. Chase asked about Kurt’s life, and Kurt told him about his apartment and his neighborhood and Rachel, until –

“I’m sorry, I’m talking a lot,” Kurt apologized.

“It’s not a problem. I like hearing what you have to say. You’re very excited when you talk. It’s… refreshing. A lot of New Yorkers can be very jaded and caustic.”

“I’ve met a few of those,” Kurt said. “But I guess I’ve met a lot of good people too… like Isabelle.”

“And me?”

“And you. Baiting for compliments much, Chase?”

“Guilty as charged.”

They both laughed lightly. Kurt had a swooping feeling in his gut. 

The check came. They both could’ve lingered longer, but they long lunch they were taking could only go so long. 

“I got it,” Chase said as Kurt started for his wallet. 

“You don’t have –” Kurt started, but Chase cut him off.

“You’re a poor intern, right?”

They walked back to work. On that walk, Chase said, “We should do this again.” 

“I don’t know how many long lunches I can take as a lowly intern.”

“Well, maybe it can be… dinner.”

“Dinner?” Kurt was confused and sounded it. 

Chase stopped on the middle of the sidewalk. He was lucky there wasn’t a lot of foot traffic currently, for stopping on a busy city sidewalk was a death sentence, or, well, a sentence to get cursed at and possibly bruised. 

Chase pinched the bridge of his nose, face scrunched up in frustration. He dropped his hand. “I’m asking you out on a date, Kurt.”

It all made sense in a hindsight-is-20/20 way. Especially that unsettled but not unpleasant feeling Kurt had been having. It was a crush. He hadn’t had a crush in a while. With Blaine it had been love, commitment, and long term. It was a different thing. 

“In my defense I’m really bad at telling when people are flirting with me or not flirting with me.”

“I definitely figured that out.” 

“Why?” Kurt asked, his brow furrowed.

“Am I asking you out?” Chase said. Kurt nodded. “I found out it was your idea for the fashion music video, and that you snuck in to get it made. Brains, creativity, and initiative in one person – that’s a rare combo. And you’re pretty cute.” 

…

They went to that dinner. And another. Chase became the first person since Blaine that Kurt kissed. The first person since Blaine that he made out with. It didn’t go further than that. And it was nice, immeasurably nice to have someone to date and kiss and not be alone with. It assuaged, if not healed, the hurt that was Blaine. 

But it was nothing more than nice. Kurt guessed he got lucky with Blaine. It didn’t pain him quite so much anymore to think of him randomly, perhaps because Kurt was resigned to so many of his memories being related to that boy. His first boyfriend had been his first love. It had always been more than “just nice.”

“You’re not over him,” Chase said one evening, maybe a month after that had started dating. They were at Chase’s place, which was a nice apartment he had to himself. They had been watching a movie, but it had ended a while ago. They were sitting on the plush carpet, backs to the couch, legs tangled together.

“I’ll never be over him,” Kurt said. They didn’t talk about Blaine. Chase didn’t even know his name. That kind of signified what they had – a surface level relationship. “He was my first love.”

He felt Chase stiffen slightly. “I didn’t realize it was so serious.”

Kurt shrugged. He didn’t know what to say to that. It was who he wa. A romantic. A drive-straight-in type. 

“I don’t want to get in the way of anything…” Chase was saying.

“There is nothing,” Kurt said sharply. 

“You just said you were in love.”

Kurt scoffed and pulled back from Chase to give him a stare. “Why do you care so much?”

“I’ve never been in love,” Chase said plainly. “I’m a few years older than you, and I’ve never been in love. It’s not an easy thing to have.”

“It doesn’t matter! Not when I can’t trust him… not after what he did. You can love someone and still not be with them. They’re other factors involved. I’m – I’m not talking about this.”

The air was now stiff and uninviting. 

“Look, Kurt,” Chase said after a tense quietness. “I’m not stupid or blind. There are moments when I can tell something reminds you of him. You get these faces…, and, well, they’re not all bad faces.”

…

The break up was mutual-enough and friendly. It hadn’t really gone far enough, physically or emotionally, to really hurt either of them. They kissed a last time, almost platonically, after it became over officially. Kurt was afforded with another realization, why this wasn’t working out and wouldn’t work out.

It was not Blaine, not Blaine, not Blaine. 

He spent a long night with Rachel with watching musicals and eating more than his fair share of ice cream. A wallowing night. But it wasn’t spent, as Rachel thought, over Chase.


End file.
